Only Simone returned to our lines that night. Apparently the two women found just seven Germans in Houx. They were all enlisted men who wanted to surrender when they were told that the Americans were coming. They surrendered to the two women, who took their weapons, locked the arms in a separate room, and put the Germans in a cellar. Odette stayed there with the men, and Simone returned to our lines to get someone to come out and take the prisoners.

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The next morning, I made several attempts to enter the town, but I was stopped by machine-gun and rifle fire each time. Finally, traveling by jeep and then on foot, a lieutenant from a cannon company and I reached the ghostlike town. We heard a telephone bell ringing in a house across the street. It proved to be a small store, and I dashed in. In the semi-darkness I called out and saw a door start to move. I turned, carbine at the ready, and saw a woman coming out of the cellar. I asked her if there was a Mademoiselle Odette who had come yesterday. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘She is in the cellar with the prisoners.’

I started down to the cellar and called ‘Odette, Odette.’ Finally, I heard her voice, amid a strange babble. Other shadows in the dark turned out to be the seven prisoners and most of the local population, who had taken refuge from shell fire in the cellar during the preceding night and that morning. I turned the prisoners over to the lieutenant (also leaving him with the problem of handling an old man who had gone stark raving mad during the night and thought he was Louis XIV) and took Odette back to St. Jean.

Odette and Simone were both ready to try again. They successfully completed a mission to secure fresh, accurate and immediate intelligence on the area near Docelles. The difficult short-range mission was accomplished with promptness and skill.

On October 9, I took Odette and Simone to near Glonville to attempt infiltration there. As we passed through the villages in that region, we saw desolation beyond description. Villages that once had perhaps 20 houses now had only three or four left anywhere near intact. I found that it was too risky to allow the two women to infiltrate in the area, and we returned to Rambervillers. Darkness caught up with us there, and it was impossible to proceed farther.

On October 11, I sent two male agents through the town of Bruyers by Fays. I instructed their guide to come back as soon as possible on October 12. He returned that afternoon. I accompanied the guide with Odette and Simone through the forest just a little beyond the line parallel to our last position. There was considerable machine-gun fire to our left, and the Germans were only about 100 yards from our position. I left the others in the forest and started back.

Odette and Simone returned from that mission on October 14. They had been able to proceed as far as Taintrux but had not been able to reach St. Die. Their report was particularly valuable because it warned of considerable troop movement in the forest region near Les Rouges Baux. They also brought back another excellent report from one of our chains of agents.

Another woman I worked with was Jeannette, who I called ‘the spy who used her head.’ She, too, was courageous. But when she was captured and faced almost certain torture and death, she found that more than courage was necessary.

Jeannette came to our unit as a volunteer for the infiltration of the dangerous Gerardmer region. Gerardmer, a prime intelligence objective, was located at the western end of the Col de la Schlucht, one of the most important passes in the Vosges Mountains and a key supply line for the Germans. It was also a beehive of Gestapo activity. We had already lost two agents there.

Jeannette was a plain-looking woman of 38 who had been in the Resistance for two years, since her husband had been sent to a forced-labor camp in Germany. She looked like a typical French housewife of the region, which she was. She was a spy only by an accident of war. Her mission for the OSS was twofold. First, she was to secure intelligence about enemy activities in Gerardmer and the 40-mile area ahead of our lines, which she would traverse. Second, she was to make contact with the Gerardmer Resistance.

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